April 29, 2015 By Steve AndersonWe all have a story to tell, right? We want to share those stories with our loved ones in hope they learn from our life experiences. However, most kids and many adults don’t have time or the patience to read a whole book about grandma’s life; they are just too busy with jobs, families and living life. But some of them will make time to read vignettes or brief stories about individual events that happened in a family member’s life. Those are the thoughts of Sally Wible, mother of . . .

5 sons and grandmother of 18. Sally and her husband currently living in Vineyard, Utah.Sally started a weekly writing group called the Wednesday Writing Sisters. This group meets in Sally’s home two Wednesdays a month. Working together with other neighbors and friends helps encourage her to sit down and write the stories about life events that she wants to leave for her grandchildren.For Sally, the interest in writing about her life started with the help of her mother. Originally, her mother took an adult writing education class. She helped and encouraged Sally to start a writing group where friends can come together and write their stories in the company of others who want to write their own life stories.

The Wednesday Writing Sisters

Sally feels that it’s easier to write one’s personal story in smaller individual segments or vignettes rather than trying to do it as one long narrative. “And it’s a lot easier reading a few stories at one sitting rather than trying to work your way through a whole life story” says Sally. Reading stories about her mother’s life inspired her to want to start writing about her own life.The Vineyard group of the Wednesday Writing Sisters started when Sally invited a few of her friends to come over to her home and join her as she began working on writing her own life story. Margaret Olderog was quite excited to join the Wednesday Writing Sisters because she thought she was being invited to a “riding club.” Though she was a bit disappointed when she realized there would be no horses in this group, it wasn’t long before she was fully engaged in writing her stories about her life and loving it. Jan Blackburn, another of the group’s members said, “I didn’t really want to come to a writing club at first but I really liked Sally and I wanted to be supportive. Now I look forward to my afternoons with my friends, writing stories for my grandkids to read. These ladies are giving me the confidence I need to write.”The group meets for about an hour and a half, twice a month to share ideas for what they can write about. They share what they wrote during the week and offer support and suggestions to each other. Barbara Brinton said, “I like to add recipes, pictures and other interesting things that reflect the story of my whole family. This isn’t just my own life story; it’s a growing project that the whole family takes part in.”Jan Blackburn added that she has a granddaughter who was adopted. She said that the birth mother insisted on writing about some of the meaningful events of her life and gave it to the adoptive mother along with her baby. She wanted to be sure that when her baby was old enough, she could read stories about her birth mother’s life and get to know about this woman who gave her life.Joanne Thorn, whose husband recently passed away, finds that being part of this writing group has been very helpful for her in dealing with her loss. She shares her stories with others in the group and with her children and grandchildren. They keep asking her for more stories that they can read. They love reading them.Many of these women write stories that include some of the hard times they went through in their individual lives. These are stories that are hard to talk about and still carry some pain. Somehow, writing makes it easier for them to address the issues. It gives them a way to express feelings they may not be able to share in other ways. Sally explains that there have been several times when tears were shed as stories were read out loud and others learned things about their friends they never knew before. They find that grief and pain seem easier to handle when they share it with others through their writing.The Wednesday Writing Sisters group continues to grow as others join them. There is a sense among these women that they are doing more than just reliving moments of their lives. Through their writing they are creating a legacy for their posterity. They will be remembered through their stories, long after they are gone. Someone once said that you cannot love someone you do not know. Surely these women will be remembered and loved. Through their stories, they will be known to their posterity for generations to come.